The Fascist Habit of Mind: Part One

Last night on his electric teevee show, Mr. Chris Hayes noted (with the kind of revulsion usually reserved for discovering that some asshole partygoer has left you an upper decker to clean up)  that "some Conservatives" have grown so desperate to deflect the blame for the giant, orange monster that has sprung from the fascist flower bed they spent the last 30 years fertilizing that they are blaming Barack Obama for the rise of Trump.

And while I am pleased that Mr. Hayes is part of the tiny archipelago of Liberal talk which Comcast still permits MSNBC to air between 7 and 9 PM (Central Time), his outrage over this particular issue is kinda hilarious.

Why?

Because as Brother Charlie Pierce noted yesterday, one of the lead sled dogs dragging this particular load of wingnut horseshit is our old friend "Box Turtle" Ben Domenech!

Very Reasonable Conservative Flat Out Blames Obama for Trump's Muslim Ban

...
It is no accident that President Obama's America has given rise to Donald Trump. It is an America that is more tribalist, where people feel more racially and religiously divided; more politically correct, where people feel less free to speak their minds; and it is an America where trust in the nation's elites, whose skills are credentialed but unproven, are at historic lows.

To paraphrase the great Michael Berube, I used to be a centrist but the San Bernardino shooting has made me hate affordable health care. Or, if the country had elected John McCain and Sarah Palin,

I never would have been dick enough to call Coretta Scott King a communist.

This guy was a lot sharper when he was stealing stuff.

What Brother Pierce does not mention is that, were it not for the tireless efforts of that very same Chris Hayes of MSNBC (along with many of his colleagues), "Box Turtle" Ben may well have remained another fringe wingnut worker bee slouching along just below the surface of Official Respectability.

But for reasons that I am dead-sure no one will ever talk about on the record, Mr. Hayes and his merry band have decided to adopt "Box Turtle" Ben as their very own Newt Gingrich: an objectively odious troll who has been given a Golden Ticket by someone, somewhere miles far, far above my pay grade and who now enjoys the full, rehabilitative perks and protections of The Gingrich Rules.

Which is at least part of the reason that you will now find "Box Turtle" Ben on Once-Respectable Network Sunday Showz like Face the Nation --

CBS' Face The Nation: Donald Trump, Republican presidential candidate; Dr. Ben Carson, republican presidential candidate; Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY); Michael Morell, former deputy CIA director; Ed O'Keefe, The Washington Post; Molly Ball, The Atlantic; Ben Domenech, The Federalist; David Ignatius, The Washington Post

-- instead of cadging wingnut welfare beer money at the Sammie Awards like a peasant:

Ben Domenech of Alexandria, VA. Mr. Domenech along with Brad Jackson of Austin, TX won the $10,000 Messenger Award for their original and popular daily podcast, Coffee and Markets. With over 5,000 downloads each day, Coffee and Markets has quickly become one of the most widely listened podcasts on the right.

And so, even at the very heart of the Liberal Media Conspiracy command center, there is still a club and you are still not in it, because what Acting President Bartlet once said in jest, the Chairman of NBC News and MSNBC now takes as a his Prime Directive:




But also too, the Mr. Hayes' lament that "some Conservatives" are now blaming the Kenyan Usurper for the rise of Wingnut Orange Julius Caesar is well wide of the mark.

Sure, on MSNBC's Morning Judas, Joe Scarborough continued Day Two of feigning shock and sorrow that his American Fascist Party was full of fascists, but it was both he and Respectable Liberal Scold Ruth Marcus who shared a long, keening lament that Barack Obama had let it come to this.

Turns out, once again Brother Pierce and I both happened to be watching the same Tijuana political donkey show at the same moment:

The topic was the president's "tepid" response to recent events in Paris and in San Bernardino. It was generally agreed that the president "doesn't want" to be a "wartime president," which will come as some surprise to the extended al-Alwaki family, to say nothing of the bin Ladens. (This is a way of calling the president a pussy without being Ralph Peters.) Moreover, they exercised the recent line of thinking by which it is the president's alleged lassitude which is responsible for the unreasoning panic in the country and the stubborn reality of Donald Trump's poll numbers. This is, of course, completely bananas. There is nothing this president could have said, ever, that would have kept the Republicans from saying the opposite, which, in this case, means mongering fear and mongering war. But it was at this point at which the gorge hit high tide. It happened when Marcus began her remarks by saying, "As a mom…" At which point, the remote took flight and landed just shy of the suitcase across the room.

Which brings us at last around to the point I have been ambling towards -- that for almost as long as any of us can remember, the Right and the Center have been on full autopilot.  For the Right, the Left is always automatically to blame for everything that is wrong with this country.   Any dissent or disagreement on this point is simply taken as positive proof for how deep the Liberal Conspiracy goes.

For the Both Siderists, the Left is always automatically  to blame for at least half  of everything that is wrong with this country.  Remember this golden oldie from Tommy "Suck on This" Friedman back when it started to become perfectly clear that the Bush Administration was botching the war they had lied us into?

Let's Talk About Iraq

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: June 15, 2005

Ever since Iraq's remarkable election, the country has been descending deeper and deeper into violence. But no one in Washington wants to talk about it. Conservatives don't want to talk about it because, with a few exceptions, they think their job is just to applaud whatever the Bush team does. Liberals don't want to talk about Iraq because, with a few exceptions, they thought the war was wrong and deep down don't want the Bush team to succeed. As a result, Iraq is drifting sideways and the whole burden is being carried by our military. The rest of the country has gone shopping, which seems to suit Karl Rove just fine...

Trumps' way has been made straight by these two, diseased and codependent habits of mind: the straight-ahead, overt insanity the Right (Joe Scarborough) and the groveling, accommodationist Vichy-Washy Center (Ruth Marcus).

Hardwired into both of the Right and the Center is the axiomatic belief that somewhere behind every Conservative atrocity there must always be Liberal to blame.

And this habit of mind suits the American Fascist Party just fine.